Gattuso confident AC will go through
The tie is delicately poised after United’s 3-2 win at Old Trafford on Tuesday, although Wayne Rooney’s stoppage-time winner makes the English club marginal favourites to advance to next month’s final.
But Gattuso, who was badly missed after being forced off with a foot injury, insisted the Italians could still clinch their third final appearance in five years.
“There’s a week to go and I will do everything to be there,” the World Cup winner said.
“It hurt watching from the bench and seeing us lose to a goal in the final minute. But we can take a lot of positives from Tuesday night, to face a great team and go back home with two away goals.
“To get to the final now we need a great performance. It will be a battle, but 1-0 is good enough for us and I’m sure the San Siro crowd will give us a helping hand.”
Both of Milan’s goals were the result of the brilliance of their Brazilian playmaker Kaka.
“He does things other players cannot even conceive of,” said Milan coach Carlo Ancelotti.
Kaka himself however was critical of his own performance, admitting he should he have made more of two good second-half chances to complete his hat-trick before United turned a 2-1 deficit into victory on the night.
“We stopped playing in the last half hour and I also felt my own performance dip. “But we can take a lot of encouragement from our performance, and that will fire us up for the second leg,” he said.
The devout Christian added: “I have faith in my team and I feel we will go through. Many people wrote us off when we drew at home to Bayern Munich in the last round, and we played an amazing match in the second leg (winning 2-0 in Bavaria) to reach the semi-finals.”
Paulo Maldini is rated extremely doubtful for the second leg after suffering a knee injury in the first half of last night’s 3-2 defeat at Old Trafford.
The veteran defender’s knee swelled up after the injury and he described the pain as ‘unbearable’.
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